‘People shouldn’t be allowed to act like that.’
‘Of course not, but they do.’
‘What’s happening here?’ Petra asked. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Dismantling the studio, clearing everything out. My grandfather died last year and those guys just bought the place. I’m clearing his things for my nan, then helping them subdivide.’
‘Sorry. That must be hard.’
‘Yeah. But I’d rather be involved. If Picton and Worthing had their way, they’d throw my granddad’s whole life’s work in the tip.’
2 When Petra got back to the shop, there were a couple of browsers – one a woman with a restless child of about five or six, who Petra immediately red-flagged. A student-looking guy was waiting at the vacant counter. Suki was probably doing something in the back, and Petra felt unnecessarily guilty about having taken a lunch break.
‘Sorry to keep you. Can I help?’
‘No worries. I haven’t been waiting long.’
Petra sold the guy a pack of Sammi Superstars baseball cards from Korea, scanning the CCTV screens for Suki as the debit card machine connected. There was an old couple upstairs flicking through the racks of prints, but no Suki yet to appear on the cycle.
Needful Things. When Suki had named the shop, Petra thought it was named after the Stephen King book about a shop where each item has its true spiritual home. But when she asked, Suki said she’d never heard of Needful Things. Her business plan was to stock the store with ‘things that speak to me’ and wait for the style-starved customers to flock in and buy everything. But Petra couldn’t help thinking, not so deep down, that most of the crap they sold was absolutely needless. There was so much stuff per person in England, you couldn’t even give decent clothes or books or furniture away. Most of it ended up in the charity shops that lined the high streets, a fraction being rehomed. Nobody needed more pointless bric-a-brac in their lives, especially here – not one more designer plastic kids’-movie doll for grown-ups, not one more wine-glass charm, not one more fake neon diner sign, not one more gilded ‘Love’ mantel sculpture.
The shoppers seemed to agree. The business had languished in the red ever since opening. Sales income barely covered a quarter of the rental, never mind Petra’s decent salary or the other overheads. But Suki was a Barlow – the Barlow black sheep no less, as she told it, refusing to go into the family ‘law-slash-finance-slash-fostering-massive-state-corruption-in-third-world-countries’ business. It was irksome for the family that she’d refused to come back home to Hampshire-slash-Kensington from Leamington after studying sociology-psychology-anthropology at Warwick University, of all places. At least she could have taken philosophy, politics and economics, the arts stream for the moneyed student with ambitions. Nonetheless, Needless Things, as Petra heretically thought of it, kept her occupied, and for that reason the relatively tiny write-off was worthwhile to her family.
The restless boy was beginning to act up now, his whining and flopping becoming more intense as his mother continued to ignore him, and from the way he was swinging on her sleeve it was clear to Petra that he was going to knock something over – her bet was on the glass-fronted display cabinet of US Congress Funko figures. As it happened, it was the dump bin of Hot Tattooed Dudes Taking Their Shirts Off colouring books – Suki had ordered fifty copies, no return, and even she had given up the hobby after three and a half pages.